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Shania on "Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud" podcast

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Shania Twain Recalls Fearing That Parents Would 'Beat Each Other to Death'

Twain said she helped her mom devise a 13-hour drive to Toronto to escape her abusive stepfather.

By Jaelani Turner-Williams | Complex | July 29, 2026

Country-pop musician Shania Twain is recalling the time she helped her mother temporarily leave an abusive marriage.

The five-time Grammy winner discussed how she hatched the escape plan as a child on the Tuesday (July 28) episode of podcast Fashion Neurosis.

Over the years, Twain has publicly shared that she and her mother, Sharon Morrison, were victims of sexual and physical abuse by the singer’s stepfather, Jerry Twain.

Around the 29-minute mark of the interview, Twain said that she had “the power to escape” the abuse mentally but didn’t have the ability to “physically escape” as a child.

“That would mean running away,” she said. “And if I ran away as a juvenile, then I would be put in a home or foster care and then the house would have investigated. We would have been separated.”

The musician added that one of her biggest fears was that her parents would “beat each other to death during the night.”

“There were a lot of grave moments, really dark ones,” she continued. “And so at the age of 13, I felt this was a pivotal point in my mother's sort of respect for my maturity. And she depended on me in that moment.”

Twain went on to recall that she “premeditated” a plan for her, her mother, and her three siblings to flee the home while her stepfather was out of town. Among the sentimental items that the family brought with them were her grandmother’s heirlooms, a crucifix, and grandfather clock, the latter of which sat across the siblings’ lap in the backseat of their car during their 13-hour drive to Toronto.

“I'm thinking, ‘OK, I'll do it for her, but this is our great escape right now. So, whatever it takes to get her to drive this car,’” Twain said. “Because I'm 13 and I don't have driver's license. So, we make this escape at the point where I really thought one of us is going to die in this house.”

Upon arriving to the city, Twain went to the Yellow Pages, where she found a shelter, although getting there “wasn’t fun.” Twain, her mom, and her siblings eventually returned to her stepfather. In November 1987, when Twain was 22, her mom and stepfather both died in a car accident in Northern Ontario.

In a 2022 interview with The Sunday Times, Twain recalled the lengths she went to in attempting to make herself undesirable to fend off her stepfather’s sexual advances.

“I would flatten my boobs,” she recalled. “I would wear bras that were too small for me, and I’d wear two, play it down until there was nothing girl about me. Make it easier to go unnoticed. Because, oh my gosh, it was terrible—you didn’t want to be a girl in my house.”

https://www.complex.com/music/a/jaelaniturnerwilliams/shania-twain-mother-abuse-escape-little-miss-twain